It has been a busy news week for nutrition this week. You may have heard things about needing to cut down our sugar to 5% and increase our fibre to 30g a day. This is because a report was issued by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition. The report started 7 years ago at the request of the Department of Health and was kindly funded by us the UK tax payers. Zoe Harcombe has done an excellent job of going through the study, which you can read Here, which I highly recommend you do, especially the Conflicts of interest among the panel members. There are 2 things from the report I wanted to pick up on though. The first is about total dietary carbohydrate. The report states that "total carb intake appears to be neither detrimental nor beneficial to cardio-metabolic health (heart disease and diabetes)". So they cant say whether carbohydrates are good or bad for health, which begs the question; What have you been doing for the last 7 years?The second is on the fibre love in that seems to be happening. The report recommends that daily fibre intake should be increased from 18g to 30g, but their own trials "indicate no effect of dietary fibre on cardiovascular or type 2 diabetes mellitus risk factors". So why do we need twice as much as we did a fortnight ago? I don't think I'd have an issue with doubling my fibre intake if there was a reason to, but the only thing the study found was that an increase in fibre "increased faecal mass". Wahoo, big poo's! You never hear this on the news or radio though do you? I can just imagine John Snow "In todays news the government recommends eating more fibre so you can do bigger poo's".At this point I'd like to say rant over and move on, but unfortunately I'm just moving on to another rant. This time it's about the governments pathetic attempt to help the obesity epidemic by making pub and restaurant chains have the calories on their menu's. How is this supposed to help exactly? Nearly every food in supermarkets have nutrition information on them. Has this helped obesity? No, so why would knowing the calories of your weekly pub lunch help? How often do people eat out anyway? The majority of people I know say once or twice a week if that and I'm willing to bet that what they're eating the other 90% of the time is doing their weight loss more harm than burger and chips on a Saturday afternoon.I think it's time the government did something a bit more effective to help people with their weight loss and it should start with the "Eat Well Plate"

1) Take sugary cereals off the Carbohydrate section. Feeding children or adults 25g of sugar first thing in a morning is a sure fire way to shoot their blood sugar up and start storing fat.2) Take sugar laden fruit yoghurts off the plate3) This is the simplest one. Remove all the cakes, biscuits and chocolates. These do not form part of a healthy diet and shouldn't be eaten every day regardless of if you are trying to lose weight or not.I don't think anybody could argue with these three changes, they're just common sense. So why are we being told it is ok to eat these foods on a daily basis?It is time something purposeful was done about obesity and knowing the calories of your pub lunch and doing big poo's just isn't enough.